The Labour Party will review its opposition to a pre-election alliance with Fine Gael closer to polling day, sources close to the Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, predicted yesterday.
Delegates to Labour's national conference last year decided not to rule out any coalition option, on the recommendation of the party's leader, Mr Ruairí Quinn.
However, Labour "will look at the position again if Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats could get back", The Irish Times was told by a Fine Gael figure.
Yesterday Mr Noonan remained confident that he could gain power, despite a poor MRBI poll result, saying: "We have had bad weeks before."
A formal election pact is unlikely, although Fine Gael is confident that the two parties will reach a looser arrangement, involving a vote-transfer agreement.
So far private Fine Gael polling shows that voters are not transferring between Fine Gael and Labour candidates in the numbers required, the source conceded.
The Labour deputy leader, Mr Brendan Howlin, said last week that Labour had given itself a valuable flexibility by refusing to enter into a pact with Fine Gael.
"If there is a continuing difficulty with any individual party then it does not impact on us. Whether we succeed or whether we fail it will be on the basis of what we say, or do," he said then.
Yesterday a Fine Gael source said a Fine Gael-Labour coalition was certain with eight extra seats and would have "the first shot at creating a government" with four or five seats.
The Labour Party's opening election promise to spend hundreds of millions of euro over the next five years on education, health, childcare and welfare will not create tensions, Fine Gael believes.
On Monday the Labour leader insisted that the six-point pledge would represent Labour's "bottom line" in any post-election coalition negotiations.
However, the Fine Gael leader is determined not to repeat the mistake of his predecessor, Mr John Bruton, in 1992, when he laid down too many preconditions for Labour, sources argue.
"Ruairí Quinn was one of the most conservative and prudent ministers of finance in the history of the State. Promises will always be conditional on proper management of the economy," one Fine Gael source told The Irish Times.
The party questions the TG4/MRBI Clare constituency poll, published on Monday, which showed Fianna Fáil comfortably retaining its three Dáil seats with an increased vote.
However, a private Fine Gael poll claims that the sitting TD, Mr Donal Carey, and his running mate, Ms Madeleine Taylor-Quinn, will be elected with 31 per cent.
Explaining the differences between the polls, Fine Gael said TG4 gave the party the same share of the poll but used a much shorter list of candidates on its mock ballot paper.
Fine Gael, on other hand, had included candidates from Sinn Féin, the Progressive Democrats and an Independent fighting on a Shannon Airport platform.
